


The Cost of Redemption

by kattastic99



Series: In Death Are You Redeemed [9]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Adam Taurus Redemption Arc, Gen, Genuinely have no idea what to tag this with, Indirect self harming, Referenced Child Abuse, Suicidal Ideation, Suicidal Thoughts, Will update these tags over time unless I don't, lots of dark shit, some dark shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-15 07:34:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29060628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kattastic99/pseuds/kattastic99
Summary: Adam Taurus survives his death, and has to come to terms with it.
Relationships: Past Blake Belladonna/Adam Taurus - Relationship
Series: In Death Are You Redeemed [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1993420
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First multi-chapter fic lets GOOOOOOOO 
> 
> There's no way in hell I'm naming each chapter by the way

Lots of people say that your life flashes before your eyes as you die. A much smaller number of people have actually had a near death experience, and accounts from them differed wildly; some said they did, others said they didn’t, some said they saw a light and some said all they saw was darkness. Adam had always thought that it must just depend on the person; he’d certainly seen a lot of people die, most of them by his own hand, and he couldn’t say with certainty whether or not any of them had seen a playback of their lives in their final moments. All Adam could say for sure from what he’d seen of death was that it hurt, and it was scary. 

“Oh.” A little whisper, that was all he’d been able to push through his lips, through the pain, through the exhaustion. Processing the pain alone was more than he could handle, some dim part of his mind figured that he was probably in shock. But with both of his lungs pierced, he wasn’t going to be alive long enough for it to wear off. 

Yang ripped her half of Gambol Shroud out of his back first, and Blake followed immediately after. Not even Adam was sure if his grunt was one of pain or simply the sound his lungs made as the blades were pulled out. Blake had stepped to the side in the same movement, so when he fell forwards he was barely able to catch himself with a few stumbling steps. He couldn’t feel the blood pouring down his front and back, but he knew he was dying. 

Adam Taurus fell to his knees, arms limp at his sides as he struggled fruitlessly to breathe through his own blood. He was so tired, the fight had gone far longer than he’d expected and now he was both choking  _ and _ bleeding to death; it was becoming harder and harder just to stay conscious, let alone do anything else. But, if he tried, if he really tried, he knew he had enough energy left in his life to flop onto his side, grab Blush, and shoot one of them. They’d all broken their aura, and Blush had a swapping chamber design so it could fire a wide spread low energy burst to launch his sword or to fire a high caliber dust-round. Without aura, even the scattershot could kill them. 

He didn’t want to. There was only one thing he wanted, really, but it was the middle of the day, the stars were hidden by the sun. The sun was a star, though…. Maybe, maybe if he could just, just tilt his head back far enough, he could see it. Maybe….

Everything went black for a moment, like the world had skipped forward a couple of seconds, and he was falling. He couldn’t process much since it was so fast and he was so,  _ so _ tired, but he felt his right side slam into something, and then he felt rushing water cascade over him before his back slammed onto rough, cold stone. He didn’t know if it was dark or if he was just closer to dying, but he couldn’t see very well. Did he even have his eye open?  _ Was _ he still alive? It hurt, still, so he must have been, but it was so hard to tell, so hard to think, so hard to breathe. 

He wanted to see the sun. Adam tried to sit up, but was unable to even get his head off the ground. He did at least manage to roll his head over to the side a bit, that was something. It took him another moment, but what meager light there was in here still shone brilliantly off of Wilt’s blade. Adam didn’t think he’d ever see his sword again; it was a part of him, almost literally, and he knew the moment Yang had thrown it off the cliff that he’d lost. He was reaching for it before he’d even thought about it, but he couldn’t really think of anything at the moment so that was probably fine. He was a little too far away, though, and he strained towards it with every last scrap of life he had left. He wiggled, inched closer, shoved against the floor with all his might and managed to flop at least five inches closer. It almost knocked him out, but he’d gotten in reach of his sword. Actually it had probably almost killed him. 

Wilt was a part of him, he couldn’t die without it. Adam barely managed to muster the energy to lift his hand, but he was finally able to weakly grasp Wilt’s handle. There….. Now he could die…

The world dimmed around him, and Adam might have taken that as a sign of the end if Wilt wasn’t somehow shining even brighter than before. In fact, it almost looked like-

Wilt’s shining glow went out like a light, but it didn’t take the rest of the world with it. A sensation not unlike getting dunked into boiling hot water slammed through Adam’s entire body, but before he could even process it enough to want to scream it fizzled away and left him with a sort of full-body tingle. That rush of heat had momentarily eclipsed all of his pain, and when it left it had taken quite a lot of pain with it. It woke him up, it cleared his eye, it freshened his very breath! It…..

It had healed him.

With much less pain to worry about, his system fell out of shock and Adam oddly enough felt much worse than when he’d been dying; he could breathe, but it hurt like hell and his wheezing was still a little wet. His chest was far from the only part of him that felt like it was on fire, though; his abdomen felt almost like he’d been shot by a cannonball, and his right shoulder ached terribly. Adam sat up, and he almost stood up and started walking before a very important question bubbled up in his mind and stopped him; why?

Why even get up? What was he going to  _ do _ now? 

If he was careful, maybe he could sneak up on Blake and Yang before they got too far away and shoot them? That was something, but….. Why? 

_ Because she betrayed me! _ his mind roared in a rage.  _ Because she abandoned me! She promised, she  _ **_promised_ ** _ that she would never leave me, and she  _ **_did._ ** _ After everything we’d been through, everything I’d done! _

Adam pushed himself back onto his feet, using Blush like a cane to help him. His steps were shaky, but the anger boiling in his blood pushed him onwards.  _ She left me, and acted like she never even knew me. Threw our memories in the trash and replaced me with a  _ **_human._ ** _ And then they KILLED ME! _

Passing through the waterfall sucked a lot more than the first time, since he was weakly stumbling instead of flying through the air and he didn’t even have the cloud of death to shield him. He didn’t have to worry about being quiet since he knew the cliff would hide him just as it hid Blake. 

_ What a shame I have to spoil their victory party. _ There was blood dripping down the right side of his head, he only just noticed it, but he still smirked. 

His smirk, his anger, his heart and his soul fell through the stone beneath his feet when he finally heard the sound Blake was making. 

Up on the rocky outcrop they’d battled on, far above Adam’s head and curled up in Yang’s arms, Blake was sobbing her eyes out. 

She wasn’t crying, she wasn’t weeping, she was  _ sobbing.  _ Adam had heard this kind of crying before, and it was usually when someone found their friend’s body. He could hear her gasping for breath, could hear her soul tearing itself apart. She was crying like a part of her had  _ died. _

Why?! Why, why, why, why was she broken, why did she care, why wasn’t she happy?! He wanted to kill her! He wanted to destroy everything she loved, why was she  _ CRYING?! _ Adam knew what he was going to do after he finally killed her and crying sure as hell wasn’t it. 

“We didn’t have a choice, Blake,” Yang said as her voice drifted down to where Adam lurked below. “He was going to kill us… kill  _ you. _ He wasn’t going to stop, we didn’t-”

Blake managed to suck in a shuddery breath and force some words out between her guttural sobs. “WHY?” Her next words were unintelligible, and she tried again. “I kn-know, Yang, I know! I don’t- I don’t,” she sucked another breath in and it sounded worse than Adam’s own blood slicked gasps had. “I don’t  _ understand! _ I don’t, u-understand, how he  _ hated me _ so much.” 

“He was delusional, Blake,” Yang said gently. “There’s no telling what was going through his head, but….. He made his choice. He said it himself.” 

Whatever it was Blake said next, Adam didn’t hear it because he’d already stumbled back through the waterfall in a stupor.  _ What does she mean  _ **_why?_ ** _ It’s obvious! YEARS we spent dancing to that stupid tune, going on dates and sharing a tent, confiding in each other, I TOLD HER that I knew she would stay by me and so everything would be fine! Of  _ **_course_ ** _ I hated her, with how much time we had to spend together. _ That was how it worked, that was how everything worked. Adam collapsed against a wall of the cave so well hidden by the waterfall, and he slid to the ground so fast that it hurt when his ass slammed against the rock. 

_ She betrayed me. She gave up, after all those years! After we fought tooth and nail to make it work, burying the resentment and keeping a smile on our faces. I gave up  _ **_everything_ ** _ for her. From the moment I joined the White Fang, from the  _ **_moment_ ** _ I finally escaped my life, I was indebted to her. Her dad was our leader, he fucking INTRODUCED us! Years, I spent dancing to the tune that was played for me. I played nice, I did things for her, and then we started dating. She was supposed to do the same, she was supposed to, to, to act! _

Those had not been the tears of an actor. She’d killed him, but it had broken her to do it. Why? The answer was obvious of course, it was because she had loved him. But they had just been doing their part, hadn’t they? People always said they should be dating, so they did. People always told him to be nice, so he was. It didn’t  _ mean _ anything, that was just how society worked, that’s what being an adult was about! You played your part, followed social cues, followed the rules, acted ‘proper’ and ‘civilized.’ When people ask you your opinion, you tell them what you’re supposed to. 

Blake Belladonna had loved him. It was an undeniable fact that deep in her heart, she’d loved him. And that changed things. Because if she had really loved him, then she hadn’t been saying the expected line whenever she told him so; if she had been telling the truth when she said she loved him, then she was telling the truth about why as well- she’d genuinely cared that he said the things he said, did the things he did. His words and actions had won her heart. If she loved him, then…. She’d believed him. 

Why? How?! How could she not understand? She was eighteen for fuck’s sake, you don’t make it through eighteen years of life without picking up on how the world works! 

Yang’s words echoed through his skull like a war-cry: “Did she make that promise to  _ you?  _ Or to the person you were  _ pretending _ to be?” At the time he’d just scoffed at her nonsense, because  _ duh? _ Everyone pretended to be someone, that’s how people work. Nobody….. Nobody actually acted how they wanted…… if they did, society wouldn’t work, it would fall apart! Because…..

Because….. 

Because if they did….. If everyone actually did act how they wanted, if most people acted how they wanted, and the world around them, the society around them, functioned on the principles it did because  _ that was how people wanted to be _ …..

But! That couldn’t be!  _ If I’m the outlier here, that doesn’t make any sense!  _ And why not? Because it meant he was wrong?  _ No, because…. _ Because what? What evidence was there, that Adam wasn’t simply a deeply broken man, spitting his poison into the world because he couldn’t bear to think about who he really was? What evidence was there that Adam Taurus wasn’t a cold and empty husk of a man, wearing a mask for most of his life to hide himself from not only the world around him but from himself as well?  _ But, if, if that’s true- if, if everybody else is being honest, which they couldn’t possibly nobody’s just  _ **_nice_ ** _ - _ Why? Why can’t people be nice? Because he wasn’t? Because selflessness would have killed him down in the mines, so he couldn’t afford it? Because he’d grown up in a soulless cesspit, worked half to death as soon as he could hold a pick and read safety manuals? Why couldn’t people be capable of good, just because he wasn’t? 

How long had he been this  _ empty? _ He used to like star gazing, he used to collect discarded wires from the trash and tie them into pretty shapes, when he was a kid he used to cover his dad’s long, curved horns in stuff all the time just to get him to smile. He taught himself how to use the microwave just to surprise his mom with breakfast. But then his parents died, and his horns were too small to hang things from, and the state home for orphans was down in the mines for ‘safety reasons’ and their curfew was at nine. But he still snuck out to look at the stars, he still tucked broken cords into his pockets, he remembered tying bows onto his bed posts and he remembered how the other boys in his dorm always begged him to make some for them.

Adam tried to scoff into the dark and empty cave, but it came out more like a sob. No, he knew when he’d changed. Those little joys in life, they’d been enough to carry him through the schock-prods when he was too slow in the mine, through the ‘accidents’ and the mockery, through the disdain and the cold indifference, through the sneers and the hunger pangs and the times he had to work with people who hated him. But nothing would ever be enough to get him through the branding.

Was that when he’d died inside? Or was that just when he finally gave up his last remaining shred of belief in the goodness of others? When he’d come to the conclusion that everyone must have been like him, lying and pretending to be nice when hatred and disgust was all they ever felt? Adam hugged his knees to his chest and tried not to cry too loudly. 

He’d been dead inside for years before he’d finally been branded for his insolence. Maybe he’d died when his parents did, and nobody had cared enough to notice. But when he joined the White Fang, he’d felt…. Alive, again. These were people he was happy to act for, happy to deal with. They had a goal, they wanted things to be better, and so did Adam. He hadn’t wanted any more faunus to go through what he did, he wanted to save people. 

Sienna had supported him, when he’d saved Ghira. She’d believed in him. He respected her, didn’t he? But all he could think about after Blake left was how Sienna was stifling him, how she was a coward, too afraid of the humans to  _ really _ stand up to them. She was too blinded to see that faunus were superior. 

Adam remembered killing her; he hadn’t felt much of anything, not really. He needed to get to Blake, needed to work on wiping humans off the face of the planet. Salem had promised that, and he’d been happy to assist her. Killing humans was a common goal, and he was happy to use her resources and connections for as long as he needed to. But Sienna had stood in his way, so he removed her. It was necessary for them to succeed. 

And then he’d failed, completely and utterly. Lost everything he stood for, because of Blake. Except that wasn’t exactly true, now was it? He’d lost because half of Menagerie had banded together to stand against him, because his fanatical devotion to death and destruction had terrified everybody who followed him, and when given an opportunity to escape from him they’d all taken it immediately, every single one of them. He had killed the person who believed in him the most, drove away everyone else, and died at the hands of the person that had abandoned him.

The first person he drove away, actually. After all, Blake had loved him.  _ How many times, I wonder, did I hate someone who loved me? How much of my life was filled with solitude and despair because I made it that way? _

Adam didn’t know the answer to that question. He didn’t have an answer to what to do now either. He did know the answer to another question, though;  _ Did I deserve to die here? Was it a mistake that I survived? _ The exhaustion of that death and his survival was finally creeping up on him, and Adam just let himself fall to the side and rested his head on his arm, the haze of sleep rapidly overcoming him. Even so, he knew the answer to that question.

_ Of course. _


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam pulls himself together as best he can, which isn't much, and comes to a decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woods! Walking! A dream sequence! More woods! And more walking! SO EXCITING! This totally didn't take me over a week!

It was the cold that woke him up more than it was the pain; his neck was stiff, his head was throbbing, there were four long streaks of pain on his chest and his back that throbbed and pulsed with agony, and yet with all that pain assaulting his sleep-addled mind it was still the cold that was getting to him the most. Adam’s very bones ached with the chill, and it was only now, as he struggled to sit up, that he realized sleeping in a cave behind a waterfall wasn’t the best choice if you didn’t want to be soaked and freeze to death. 

Adam fought against the stiffness and fatigue until he was standing on shaky feet. He had no idea how much time had passed, how long he’d been out, but judging by how much darker the cave was it was safe to say that it was night. It was also safe to say that it hadn’t been too much time, since he’d have frozen to death from passing out in a damp cave in soaked clothes in northern fucking Anima if it had been.

Going back through the waterfall was even worse than before this time, thanks to the cold. Honestly, his continued survival wasn’t looking too great, and it was hard for him to pretend that wasn’t for the best, but……. Something inside of him just wouldn’t let him stop; he had to keep going, keep living, he  _ had _ to survive. Even though he couldn’t think of a reason why, there was a fire inside of him that refused to go out and it pushed his shaking frame forwards step by step.

That fire was only metaphorical though, and Adam was going to need to whip up a literal one somewhere safe, and soon, if he wanted not to die of pneumonia or plain old hypothermia. He clipped Wilt and Blush back onto his belt and stared up the rocky cliff face before him. This was not going to be easy. But, as he gazed up at the wall of rock he had to climb, his eye caught sight of something else; the sky. The night sky, without a cloud to be seen. 

Adam was pulling his tired, broken body up that cliff before he could so much as think, so desperate was he to reach those glimmering stars so far above him. As he crested the final lip of rock, hauling himself up onto the outcropping he’d lost his life on, he allowed himself to collapse face up on the dirt. Far, far above him, the sky seemed to go on forever. The broken moon had only just started to rise above the horizon, a few of its tethered slivers glinting in the darkness out of the corner of his eye. 

Adam could have died there. Staring into the unbroken, infinite expanse of the starry sky, until he fell asleep and never woke up again. Staring up at the stars, it felt like falling, like sinking into the darkest ocean you could imagine. He reached up with no small amount of effort, and used his hand to block out a small section of stars; he was looking for a specific constellation, his favorite, and without his hand to guide his sight he’d never be able to find it amidst the blanket of light above him. It was so much easier when he was a kid thanks to all the light pollution, but out here in Anima, even so close to Argus, there was so much  _ more _ . 

It took him a couple minutes, and the cold was really starting to get to him so there was only so much longer he could spend here, but Adam finally found it; the constellation Inanna, the Bull of the Heavens. Honestly, he couldn’t even remember why it was his favorite constellation, it just was. For as long as he could remember, Inanna was his favorite, the first thing he would look for in the night sky. There were stories about the stars, he knew that, although his upbringing meant he didn’t know too much about most of them. His education had been bare-bones, funded by the SDC and barely regulated by the Council of Atlas; the curriculum had been digital, made in Atlas by a subdivision of the SDC and beamed into all the schools across Solitas they funded through the CCTS, so it was actually held to  _ some _ standards. They were taught the names of the constellations and a pretty basic run-through of the various stories ascribed to them by the four major cultures of the world, but not much else. In Mantle, there were fairy tales about Inanna being the one responsible for breaking the moon; she had been yoked to the moon, to pull it across the sky, but she had grown angry and pulled herself free with her might alone and pulled the moon apart in the process. When he was a kid, he thought the idea of a giant cosmic ox was really cool and even pretty; as a teenager, the idea of pulling free of your bonds and destroying the thing you were shackled to appealed to him immensely, and now…..

“The stories said you were why the moon spins, too. Without its rotation we’d never have been able to use its cycles to judge the passage of time. But all anyone ever talks about is that you broke it.” Adam’s voice was hoarse, croaking into the cold night air so quietly that he wouldn’t have echoed inside a cave. He really needed to get up, get out of here, but he found his eye sliding across the sky to gaze at the constellation Inanna was always facing; Dumo the keeper. Tasked with keeping the world working, he was the one who had yoked Inanna to the moon in the first place, because the moon had begun to slow and it was Dumo’s duty to keep it going. But he’d been in charge of everything, not simply the moon; when Inanna pulled the anchor free from the moon and shattered it, Dumo had been forced to stand before her to keep her from running, or else the pieces would fall to the world below and destroy it. In doing so, Dumo was unable to see to the rest of his tasks, and the seasons stopped turning in Solitas, leaving it frozen forever more. 

Adam lowered his arm to the ground, trying to ignore how bad it was shaking. “She stays because she loves you,” he said. “Even though you tied her to the moon, even though you keep her trapped in the sky, she does what you want. But only because you’re there. If you left, she’d abandon your desires in turn.” Adam’s mouth was dry as the desert. “So, if the only times she does what she knows you want is when you’re there to punish her for failing, does she love you at all? Or is she just afraid?” Adam had always hated Dumo, but the reasons were rather complicated; he hated Dumo for hurting Inanna, he hated Dumo for letting Solitas freeze over, but those had been as a kid. Once he got older he hated Dumo for what he represented, for what he allowed and inspired- Dumo was a faunus, in some stories he was even said to be the first of them. The story of Dumo and his failure was, in Adam’s mind, a significant factor in the resentment humans have always had for the faunus. Because Dumo’s biggest responsibility, the most important of them all by far, had not been keeping the sun and the moon in the sky or making sure the seasons were allowed to turn; his most important job was to keep the Grimm in check, keep them calm and sated, keep them  _ away. _

As an adult, Adam knew that these stories had only ever been excuses, an excuse to blame the faunus for everything wrong with the world. All the same, though, those stories had in some small way shaped who he was as a person; he’d identified with Inanna, at first as a bull and later as a servant in unwilling bondage. But in the end, it seemed like he had more in common with Dumo: a failure, who had destroyed the very thing he’d wanted to save, hated and reviled by the world he had only ever wanted to help. 

Adam rolled onto his right arm and pushed himself to his feet, unable to keep the gasp of pain from slipping out as he did. He had to find a spot to camp and fast, but he also needed to set up a fire pit. He had enough dust to get a decent campsite up and running but that was going to run out eventually. Then again, that wasn’t important yet; he had to make it through the night first. Long term plans were for after he was reasonably sure he wasn’t going to freeze to death. 

In the condition he was, Adam knew he couldn’t go very far from the waterfall, so he looked for another cave system that wasn’t behind the icy cold water; after limping around the area for twenty minutes, the best he’d been able to find was an outcropping that at least would shield him from any rain. Of course, then he had the pleasure of hunting down tinder, but that didn’t take nearly as long since he was in a forest and he had a sword- took him barely ten minutes to get a small pile of twigs and branches gathered in his makeshift dugout. Adam stood tall above the pile and pulled out a vial of fire dust; he sprinkled out a very light coating and capped it, tucking it back into his coat with the rest of his dust. Then he slashed at the top of the pile with Wilt, and the dust ignited with a flash. 

He was slumping against the rock wall of the little divot in the side of the hill before the spots in his vision had even started to dim. He needed to sleep, and with the fire’s warmth soaking into him he would have had an easier time pulling the moon out of the sky than staying awake. 

* * *

The pick was heavy in Adam’s hands as he swung it. The hard metal struck hard stone, and the stone chipped. This was his job, he had to be here and he had to do this. Adam swung the pick and made the chip larger. He needed to do this. Somebody approached him, but he did not have time to pay attention. Adam’s pick was a brush now, and he did his job and painted a broad crimson stripe across the face of the stone. There was a bright light as the person who had approached sank a red hot iron into his flesh, burning his side badly. 

Adam had to do his job, and he painted another stripe on the rock. The paint dripped and swirled into lines and shapes, and Adam’s brush became a cloth. As someone else approached and sunk a knife into his free arm, Adam wiped the lines away from the stone’s surface. The person sliced a large strip off of Adam’s arm, and when he pulled his arm back to grab his pick with both hands he saw the white bone of his arm. 

The chip in the stone expanded when Adam struck it with his pick again. The red stripes he’d painted around it moved out of the way, and he frowned. Adam put the pick down and picked up a jar of needles. He pressed one into the first red stripe, and the needle sank into it easily. The red began to drip, but it was no longer moving, so Adam did the same to the other stripe. 

Somebody walked up and pulled his chest open before grabbing a rib with a set of pliers. Adam picked up his knife and began to cut the chip in the stone open. Blood welled up from his slice as he was pulled harshly by the pliers. His rib snapped free with a horrid sound, but Adam had a job to do. His knife dug deeper, and he worked his fingers into the cut to peel the stone away. It came free like canvas, exposing the ribs underneath. One of them was missing already.

Adam grumbled under his breath as he did his job, working his pliers around the next rib that had to come out. It would be so much easier if the stone would just hold still. He had a job to do, after all. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


When he woke up, the dream was still fresh in his mind, and as he finished waking up Adam couldn’t help but find himself rather fascinated by it. He ran over the details he still had, some of them already blurring, trying to remember as much as he could. He could remember the pressure of the wounds, dull and heavy and free of pain. 

Then he woke up enough to remember the reality he lived in, the things that had happened, and he groaned in pain. He was stiff as hell again, but at least he wasn’t cold. As he pushed himself off the rock he’d slumped against and stared at the pile of ashes in front of him, Adam was also very grateful he hadn’t burned to death in his sleep. “Fuck. I need to pull myself together.” His voice sounded even worse than it had last night, he was probably getting dehydrated. He  _ had _ lost a lot of blood, after all. Aura didn’t usually tax your body when it healed you, but aura usually couldn’t heal anything more than cuts and bruises; Adam had literally no idea how this aspect of his semblance worked, although he had some educated guesses based on how the rest of it worked, but he knew that aura was  _ not _ meant to heal serious injuries. There were semblances that boosted aura, semblances that healed, even semblances that could replenish aura, but those were guided and purposeful. As far as Adam would hazard to guess, all he’d done was take all the energy he’d stored in Wilt and fed it into his broken aura, which had supercharged it enough to flash heal a lot of his critical injuries. 

It was when he tried to pull his jacket away from his chest to peek down at his skin and check on the wounds that Adam was finally awake, cognizant, and lucid enough to fully process the state he was in; dried, tacky blood was soaked into his undershirt and his coat, front and back, and he was pretty sure that peeling his jacket had also pulled the scabs open since letting his blood soaked jacket just sit on and in the wounds had essentially turned the front and back of his jacket into two giant scabs. Then, of course, the smell hit him: It didn’t smell like rot, thank the gods, but it definitely reeked like a butcher’s shop. When he reeled back and gagged, he felt even more dried blood pulling the skin around his right temple. 

He forced himself to stand still and breathe, focus; he’d gone through the waterfall after he healed, so this couldn’t be blood from the initial injury. Which meant his aura hadn’t fully healed him, it must have just been able to save his life and little more. Maybe he tore the wounds back open when he climbed the cliff? Now that he was paying attention, his breathing was severely hindered and even painful if he breathed too deeply. The thin layer of dried blood on his head was worrying, though; he scratched at it and the blood flaked off, but he couldn’t feel a wound. He’d need to find a mirror somehow. And, fuck, he also really needed to figure out what the hell to  _ do _ now. Short term goals were easy enough; find a mirror, check his health. Mid term goals weren’t much harder; start traveling while occasionally hunting and cooking, resting each night and focusing on recovery over progress. Long term goals, though, were a pain, and even his mid term goals had a couple snags since he didn’t have anywhere to travel  _ to. _

“I’m gonna have to deal with the grimm too,” he muttered as he stared down at his poor jacket. “But that might be a blessing in disguise, if I can use Wilt to soak up energy from their attacks and overcharge my aura I might be able to speed the healing up by a wide margin.” It would be useful indeed, since his current condition wasn’t exactly great. Adam had a survival chance of maybe seventy percent. In a  _ hospital. _ Out here in the wilds of Anima, it was closer to thirty if he didn’t manage to exploit his semblance some more. Of course, even if he managed to soak up enough hits to completely heal his body, if his semblance was even capable of that, it wouldn’t do anything for his mental stability. And considering he was talking to himself in the middle of the woods just standing around soaked in his own blood, he didn’t seem to be doing well. 

Adam headed towards the river the waterfall fed into with a sigh. Washing the blood off was important but he wasn’t sure if he could afford to do that just yet; his core temp was higher than it had been but he was still suffering from hypothermia, albeit only mild, so soaking himself in forty degree water wasn’t the best idea at the moment. No, he had other business with the river. First off was a damn drink, and second was to try and find that fucking motorcycle. Yang threw it at him, he had more right to it than she did at this point. Luckily he hadn’t ventured too far or finding the river might have been more difficult than walking towards it for three minutes. 

The water was so cold that it hurt his hands when he dunked them into the river to scoop up some water.  _ I should boil it first. I can get sick if I don’t. _ Adam slurped the water down immediately, and cupped his hands in the river again and again, over and over, until his throat didn’t burn and his tongue wasn’t sticky. He drank until he was full, desperate to put off having to hunt for as long as possible. His knees still wobbled a bit as he stood up, but that would go away. Finding Yang’s bike wasn’t as hard as he’d feared it would be; after twenty minutes of walking down the river looking for it he finally spotted it lying in a crumpled heap about a quarter mile downriver, overturned and half covered in ice just a few feet from where it had collided against a bend in the river and went flying. Adam didn’t even have to look at it to tell he was never getting it working considering the back wheel was completely gone. Whatever luck Adam had left must have smiled on him, though, because the mirror was still there. In three pieces, sure, but it was  _ there. _

“Well. That explains the pain in my head,” Adam said. His voice was better, but even to his own ears he sounded dead inside. The circular mirror only had about a third of itself still in its frame, but that was enough for Adam to get a look at his head and see that his right horn had snapped in half. The blood that had been dripping down the side of his head seemed to have come from a large, scabbed-over scrape right next to his broken horn. The implications were clear; his head had clearly smashed on a rock or something on the way down, and if his horn hadn’t been there the blow probably would have caved his head in. As it was, Adam could see his aura flickering over the scab periodically, likely ensuring it wouldn’t scar. 

Adam kicked the bike so hard that it went flying into the river with a splash, and then he drew Wilt and cut down six trees and sliced a boulder in half before he sheathed his sword again. His fingers were shaking and he wanted to watch something die, so he set off in a random direction and kept his eye peeled for tracks. He wasn’t paying super close attention though, at least not entirely; part of his mind was whirring away, thinking, about what he was going to do, where he was going to go, why he would even bother to keep living. That last part had an easy answer at least, because even thinking about lying down to die was revolting to some primal part of him, some deep core piece of him that abjectly refused to let himself die. Every time he wondered if he should just give up it reared its head and  _ screamed, _ so he had no choice but to keep going forward. 

But that part of him didn’t stop him from drinking unfiltered river water; it didn’t stop him from sleeping next to an untended fire pit; it didn’t stop him from burning a huge amount of energy on venting his anger when he was still half dead and on the way to starving. There was a part of him that would not let him die, a part of himself he couldn’t control or ignore, but while it compelled him to try it didn’t compel to try _hard_.

It took him another hour of stewing in his thoughts and looking for tracks before he finally caught the trail of a deer, and once he got in sight of it his semblance made quick work of it; even animals had aura, but it was rarely strong enough to be active, and his semblance’s shadow-step made him more than a match for a deer in terms of running speed. Field dressing the thing took a while, and then he had to set up another fire pit, and all in all it took him most of the rest of the day to cook up a good meal and stick as much of the rest of the meat as he could on drying racks to make jerky. The jerky from his last hunt had all but run out, he only had two strips left which wasn’t even enough for a snack, let alone enough to last him to the end of……. Whatever this was. 

He spent the rest of the day in that little camp, and when the sun went down he stored the thirty some pounds of half dried jerky by wrapping it all up tight in the tarp he kept folded up in his coat for this exact purpose, then drew a crude circuit on it in grav-dust to keep it floating twelve feet off the ground for about a day and slid a small crystal of ice dust into the seam before crushing it with the hilt of his sword as he sent it up into the air; the height would keep it out of reach of any terrestrial animals, and the ice would prevent any birds from getting to it. After chucking all the offal into a big pile a ways away from his camp to hopefully distract any predators into eating it instead of him, Adam curled up on the ground under a quickly built little lean-to near the fire, and closed his eyes. 

* * *

There were only brief flashes, impressions really, of his dream by the time he woke up. He remembered running, and he remembered some kind of, library maybe? It was already so broken, and he could barely hold onto the bits he had so he gave up and let the dream fade away. As he sat up, already looking up to check on his provisions, Adam wondered why he had yet to run into any grimm. He’d have thought that he would be a damned beacon for the bastards, but he hadn’t seen hide nor hair of them. 

He finished his last two meager strips of old jerky and got to work finishing his new batch of it. It wasn’t even noon by the time he was done packing up twenty damned pounds of jerky into his satchels and pockets, grateful as always for the way you could enlarge interior spaces with the right use of dust; pretty much nobody’s weapons or gear would work if people hadn’t figured that out hundreds of years ago. Still weighed the same, though, unless you had grav-dust, and unfortunately Adam had to be conservative with that crap. 

_ What do I do? _ It was a thought that he couldn’t ignore.  _ And how wrong was I about the world? I have all the time in the world to think about it now.  _ He was reasonably certain that the White Fang had been necessary, likely still was. But it was looking like he’d been pretty fucking wrong about the right way to go about it; the big question was whether  _ Sienna _ had been wrong, and honestly he didn’t think so. Even Blake had agreed with her, at least until Adam and Sienna had started ramping things up further and further. Faunus died every day because human society was structured in a way that kept them in terrible conditions, and Sienna had seen no reason not to fight back against the very real harm being done to their people. But there was a difference between taking what you needed from people who had more than they could ever use, and killing people who were just doing their job, a job they likely weren’t paid enough for to begin with. The problem wasn’t the people on the bottom, it wasn’t the  _ citizens _ or even the workers; it was the people on top. The Councils had a lot of the weight to bear but far from most of it; even the Councils had to bow to pressure from constituents, and it was people with absurd amounts of money that applied the most pressure. People like Jacques Schnee, like the Winchesters,  _ they _ were the problem. Sienna hadn’t gone after them because they were too well guarded, they had too much power, and it was important to focus on resources and the well being of the faunus. She hadn’t wanted to go to war. 

Assassination wasn’t war. That was a thought. Hell, the list of people causing most societal pressure was probably, what, three or four hundred names long? If even that? There were like fifteen companies that all but ran Remnant, and eleven of them had their primary headquarters in Atlas. Every last one of them exploited the working class but there were nine of them that were especially heinous, the SDC sitting proud atop that mountain as the worst of the worst. If he did this, if he really did decide to remove the specific people responsible for most of his people’s problems…… he’d have to go to Solitas. Which currently had all of its borders sealed off under a strict embargo. 

It would be far from the biggest law he’d ever broken. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam finally realizes the depths of the hole he's found himself in, and struggles to figure a way to climb back out. He succeeds, but he knows he won't make it out without leaving a lot of things behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's done! I like the idea of leaving gaps in the timeline of In Death, so we won't be seeing Adam's time in the market or his first ever meeting with Viridian. This is my first multi chapter fic, and it comes to a close here. I'm sorry it took so long, and I don't know when the next fic will go up. But I know that it's going to be even further back in time, during Adam's time in Mistral after escaping the mines, and it won't be very long. It'll mostly just be a brief glimpse of the darkness in his past, and it will focus less on the things he does and more on the things he felt. 
> 
> It's going to be very dark.
> 
> Edit because I am a FOOL, but if you read this before I realized I used the wrong formatting and wiped all the italics out, uhh. I fixed it and italics are working now.

With a newfound purpose, Adam finally had a direction to go; away from Argus. For most people on their way to Solitas that would be the opposite of what they’d need to do, but most people would be trying to go there legally, and nowadays most people would be sorely disappointed. Solitas had closed itself off, under orders from General Ironwood.  _ Should he go on the list? _ It was a legitimate question, but for the moment Adam didn’t think so. If he did he was very low priority; Ironwood was a manipulative egotistical bastard but of his many and varied flaws, hating faunus wasn’t one of them. Then again that wasn’t the point of the list, was it? The question to ask was whether or not Ironwood’s actions were a significant factor behind the current treatment of the faunus, and…… Adam still didn’t think so, honestly. Well, maybe a little; the embargo was sure to be pissing people off, and that kind of anger always trickled down to weigh on the lower classes. But the embargo was a temporary measure, and long lasting change was what Adam was after. He couldn’t enact that change himself, but he could damn well remove the obstacles for others to do so. And if the embargo  _ wasn’t _ temporary, it still would be, because if Ironwood tried to keep it going forever the pressure would only continue to build until it finally blew his head off. Maybe even literally. 

Heading south for a bit was a good idea for plenty of reasons, though; it would get warmer, for one, and Adam really wanted to enjoy warmth as much as he could before he had to go back to the frozen hell he was born in. But for another, there was a place about halfway between Argus and Mistral, nestled in a valley north of the mountain Mistral was built into the south side of, that….. Well, it wasn’t exactly a city, and it wasn’t a village, but it wasn’t just a camp either; it didn’t even have a proper name, because as far as anyone making maps or censuses was concerned the place didn’t exist. If you wanted to do something illegal but you didn’t have the kind of strength or lien to do it even in the slums of Mistral city, you hiked your sorry ass out to this valley. It was less a settlement and more the only place on the planet where it actually didn’t matter what tribe or country or army you were from, a true neutral ground that even the filthiest scum of Remnant wouldn’t dare to soil with violence. It was pretty much the nexus of the black market, and Adam had to get there as soon as possible. His only option into Solitas was on a smuggling convoy. 

Still had to actually get there, though. At the moment he was still too close to Argus, although he’d left the waterfall and the cave behind three days ago. He had at least two more days of walking before he hit the Market, assuming it was still in the same part of the valley it had been the last time he’d heard from it. It moved around a lot but that valley was massive, it would take four days of hiking to cross it end to end, so ‘in the valley’ was as precise as you could get and was still enough to keep it hidden from people who shouldn’t find it. Not that there were many authorities trying to find it, if any; Mistral’s council didn’t give much of a shit and Atlas had its own mind bogglingly huge crime problems to care about crossing international borders to try and locate a massive illegal trade center. People always gave Vacuo crap about being lawless but Adam had been there and he’d been to Mistral too, and Mistral was worse. 

Vacuo was lawless, which meant it was free. Mistral on the other hand? You could get arrested for defending yourself, sued by your attacker, and jailed for your attacker’s crime. The only reason Adam wasn’t putting Mistral on his list instead of Atlas was because Mistral fucked  _ everyone _ over and while you’d still get plenty of racism there it wasn’t nearly as systemic as it was in Solitas. 

_ Gods, the whole fucking world sucks doesn’t it? I have to keep this list as short as I can, I need to maximise the amount of damage each death will do to the system. I can kill a corrupt piece of shit every day for the rest of my life and barely make a dent if I don’t choose my targets carefully. _ Luckily for Adam, it wasn’t remotely illegal or even suspicious to look into the structure of corporations; the names and job rank of executives were freely offered, it was all part of some bullshit economical politics or whatever the hell. The CCTS was damaged after Beacon, and Adam was not keen on examining his part in that, but at least each kingdom had full coverage within its own borders besides Vale, since their CCTS Tower was still intact. He’d just have to get in range of Atlas’ Tower and he could start his research right away on his own scroll. 

Adam’s steps through the less frosty undergrowth came to a halt. His hands were already digging into every pocket he had, each time growing more and more desperate, because  _ Oh for the love of the gods HOW LONG AGO DID I LOSE MY SCROLL?!  _ Fuck, he hadn’t even remembered it existed until ten seconds ago, what the hell was  _ wrong _ with him? But then, as if by some miracle of the forgotten brothers themselves, Adam’s scrabbling fingers bumped into the smooth plastiglass surface of his scroll, tucked away in one of the many extended pockets and pouches in his jacket. Adam wasn’t the kind of faunus to pray, but he almost wanted to pick the habit up out of gratitude as he pulled his scroll out. 

Those hypothetical prayers died in his throat and rotted into a hateful curse as he stared at his scroll, or rather at the jagged bottom half of it he’d pulled out of his pocket. Adam’s grip tightened on the thing so fiercely that it splintered, and he threw it away from him so hard he felt a painful tug in his shoulder that spread a little ways down his back. 

Well then! Looked like he needed to pick up a new scroll at the Market too! With all that lien he didn’t have! Adam Taurus didn’t exactly have a bank account, although the White Fang certainly did, under a whole host of false identities and covers. Sienna had been the one to set most of those up, Adam rarely touched them but he knew how to access enough of them. Unfortunately, most of the accounts Adam remembered were set up in Vale, which normally wouldn’t be a problem thanks to the CCTS but, oh, wait, he’d gone and helped fuck that up now hadn’t he? International account transfers were no longer possible, and of the grand total of four fucking accounts Adam had access to in Mistral he’d already drained them setting up the bombing of Haven Academy. Which had fucking  _ failed, _ and thank the gods it did or he’d be even more fucked than he was already. What money was left was almost certainly frozen by the police, so….

So, what now? The new scroll was gonna set him back by at least three hundred lien, he needed to get entirely new gear so he wouldn’t get clocked on sight as an extremely wanted terrorist, Wilt and Blush had to go too and that was going to physically hurt him to do but if he was going to become a new person, a better person, then he couldn’t keep them. Getting a replacement weapon was going to cost  _ thousands _ and he had to whip up the design specs for them first and he didn’t even know what he  _ wanted _ yet, and then paying off an Atlas convoy was going to be another ten grand at the very least since whoever was gonna be smuggling him over had to use intermediary pilots thanks to the damned embargo, and at this rate fifty grand was looking like a lowball. 

“I need to make so much money,” Adam grumbled into his hands as he dragged them down his face. The thick scars of his brand felt the same under his fingers as they always had. “I have like, two marketable skills. And one of them I  _ can’t use _ in the valley.” Violence was a strict no-go except for dealing with grimm, that was the only law the black market had and violating it would have you killed faster than you could blink. As for his other marketable skill……. Gods, even if he could stomach it at the moment he knew his body wasn’t worth fifty thousand lien. 

Adam groaned and pressed his back up against a tree, sliding down to the forest floor with a soft thump. He could steal something to sell, that wouldn’t be too difficult, but the only thing worth that much would be a Dust cache from somewhere thanks to the embargo. Which, thanks to the embargo, were all more heavily guarded than the damned Academies. Maybe his old stash was still intact? He’d hoarded lien like his life depended on it while he was in Mistral after leaving Solitas, mostly because his life actually had depended on it, but even if nobody had found the stash he abandoned when he joined the White Fang there was no way there was more than ten grand in it. He could probably steal fifty grand from the rich elites in Mistral if he could so much as step foot in the city without immediately getting arrested, but it would take him months. Maybe there was some information he could sell? After thinking about that for a little while, Adam decided that probably wouldn’t work out; what secrets he  _ did _ know either weren’t valuable or would be too dangerous to share. Knowing about Salem and magic was pretty much a death sentence by itself, so anything of that caliber was right out. Any secrets of the White Fang no longer mattered thanks to him destroying the whole fucking organization with his own two hands, and it wasn’t like they’d had a very extensive spy network to begin with. They  _ had _ one but it wasn’t like they prioritized it over recruitment and strike missions and raids, and Adam had never been involved with that side of the White Fang anyways. He was a general, not a spymaster. 

The only option he had that was realistic was to try and remember another account he could get to, one located in Mistral. No matter how hard he tried, though, he couldn’t remember Sienna ever briefing him on an account he hadn’t already used up. He dug deeper, tried to remember if there had been anything back when Ghira ran the thing, but the White Fang was completely different back then, they didn’t raid things, they didn’t hoard money, the only times Ghira would set up an account for someone in the White Fang was if they needed the hel-

It was then that Adam remembered something he had never taken stock in to begin with- When he met Ghira all those years ago, he’d been a sixteen year old street orphan turning tricks to get by. Ghira had welcomed him into the White Fang immediately, but he…. Adam remembered, now, that Ghira hadn’t wanted him to feel indebted to them. He’d chalked it up to grandstanding and empty promises at the time, but if Ghira had been honest about setting him up a nest egg with his stash….. Fuck, that was why he’d abandoned the stash to begin with! He’d let Ghira have it, he had considered it paying his dues and leaving behind ties to something he’d rather forget. Ghira told him that he’d put it in some kind of, account or something, something that would accrue interest in case he ever wanted to go back to Mistral, in case he wanted to leave. It had been set up under a pseudonym so racist assholes wouldn’t liquidate it or something, it wouldn’t have been frozen with the assets Adam had under his legal name! Except, Ghira had just been the one to organize it, he hadn’t been the one to actually set it all up. That had been Sienna. She never mentioned it, not for all those years…. She’d never touched it. She’d left it for him. 

He must have been like a son to her. 

The laugh that left Adam’s mouth was broken and jagged, burning like poison and drowning him in it all at once. It was a hysterical and splintery sound, and when it finally died down it had been more of a busted sob than a laugh. 

Adam pushed himself to his feet and wiped the tears off his right cheek. His left eye was dry, it always was; his left tear duct had long since scarred over. Blake had told him once, a long time ago, that she’d read something about tears being a way of getting rid of excess emotions, that tears of different emotions crystallized differently, that they were the actual chemicals of your emotions draining out of you when they overwhelmed you. And Adam could only cry at half capacity. She’d wanted him to cry more, to let it go; he’d thought she was trying to undermine him, humiliate him maybe, he hadn’t trusted her but he’d just smiled and told her he was fine and not to worry about him so much, that she was more important. He’d wanted her to mind her own fucking business. 

A soft rustling sound, and the snapping of a twig; these were the only warnings Adam had, but for him and for all the things he’d learned and done, it was enough. Wilt and Blush were in his hands before a thought had even crossed his mind, the blade drawn halfway as he blocked the strike that would probably have shattered his weakened aura instantly. Wilt glowed as it absorbed the kinetic energy the wicked talon sparking against it delivered, and Adam immediately sucked it into his soul to boost his aura. It was significantly weaker than it usually was thanks to his condition, but now he was roughly back to normal. 

The grimm that had tried to ambush him fell backwards with a horrifying screech from its wicked beak, and Adam took a moment to gawk at it. You could have called it a gigantic rooster, if it wasn’t for the fact that it had bone white scales around its neck from its shoulders to its head, and if its wings weren’t so very clearly modified to be used as taloned arms to attack instead of to fly, and if its eyes weren’t gleaming orbs of solid white that all but glowed with malice. Its beak had razor sharp teeth, and from both its beak and the curved talons on its feet and wing tips dripped a noxious purple fluid. These things were rare as hell and twice as dangerous as they were hard to find; whatever that purple gunk they leaked was, if they managed to get so much as a drop of it under your skin you’d be paralyzed from head to toe. 

“Haven’t seen a grimm in days, and the first fucking one that comes for me is a Basilisk.” Adam barely managed to avoid being interrupted by a massive swing of those talon-tipped wings, grateful as hell that the poison they dripped wasn’t corrosive. It screamed at him, loud enough to hurt, but Adam didn’t even try to block his ears; he simply pushed forwards and swung at its neck. Wilt didn’t manage to cut through those bone scales, but the strike was at least enough to send the thing sprawling to the side, just in time for a second strike to clip its wing. Unfortunately the thing must have been downright ancient because it rolled out of the way, as if it knew what move he’d been about to make. Its legs kicked up, each of its talons longer than Adam’s fingers and as sharp as his sword, and it struck at him. He blocked it, but it kicked again, and again, its feet snapping back and forth almost faster than he could track. Honestly he was grateful, the energy it poured into his sword was rapidly fed into his aura and he could literally feel his aches fading away. The poison was worrying, though; the thing seemed to be trying to coat him in it, its fluttering kicks not meant to cut him but simply fling its poison around. It wouldn’t have to actually strike him if he got enough of it on him, it could just bail and wait for him to nick himself on a thorn or something before coming in for its meal. Did these things even eat? They were made from living animals, a fertilized chicken egg corrupted by grimm essence, they might need food. 

Adam let the thing try to trick him for a couple more seconds, before he stored up more energy and swung his blade, using the last few heavy strikes against Wilt to make its edge impossibly sharp. The basilisk let out a shriek as he lopped both of its legs off, and then he blew its head apart with a single shot from Blush. Its body dissolved into dust, and Adam frowned down at his coat; the thing’s poison hadn’t exactly managed to drench him, but there were revolting fumes coming off the few drops and splotches that had managed to land on him. It reeked like rotten eggs. 

As he headed further south, keeping an ear out for the sound of a river, Adam pulled out a bag of his jerky and tore into a few strips. He was dehydrated again but nowhere near as bad as that last time; the healing aspect of his semblance seemed to be able to replenish blood, but not from nothing. The four stripes of agony on his torso hurt much less, and after sliding a hand under his jacket to brush against the wounds on his chest Adam was happy to note that the thick scabs just flaked away to leave still sore scar tissue in its place. Now he didn’t have to worry about tearing those back open, thank the gods. It still hurt to breathe too deeply, but it was a much duller ache than the sharp, needling fire from before. 

As he kicked through a tangle in the undergrowth and stepped into a clearing, Adam noticed several things; the first thing he noticed as he lifted his gaze from the offending plant around his ankles was the fact that he apparently walked into somebody’s campsite. The second thing he noticed was that half of it had been absolutely destroyed, and the third thing he noticed was the pack of six ursas that had done said destroying. The fourth thing of note was the reedy looking faunus with a mouth full of teeth that had to be from a deep sea fish or something since they didn’t fit in his lips and looked more like a bushel of needles than teeth, who was kicking one of the ursas in the face even though the thing had him pinned to the ground with the rest of the pack hovering just behind it waiting for their chance. The five extras perked up and turned to face Adam immediately, though, and even the one with its paws full looked up at him. This distraction was enough for the wiry faunus, who teeth aside Adam would expect to see in a library more than the woods, to fucking sink his fangs into the ursas godsdamned  _ throat _ and damn near tear the thing’s head off. 

Adam dashed forwards and cleaved two of the ursas in half before blocking a swing from another while the faunus spat out his mouthful of grimm ash. By the time the guy pushed himself to his feet Adam had decapitated the one that struck him and gutted another. Needle-mouth grabbed something off the ground near the trampled campfire and hoisted his weapon, a wicked looking battle axe, into position for a swing. Something clicked into gear and the axe head began to spin like a circular saw, and he cleaved the last ursa in twain with a single swipe. 

The two of them stood there in relative silence for a few long moments, the only sounds being ambient woods noises and the sound of the axe head spinning down to a stop. Then the stranger spoke up, his voice distorted thanks to those teeth but fully understandable. “The fuck happened to you?”

Adam glanced down at himself self-consciously, suddenly reminded of the fact that he hadn’t washed off any of his own blood and also currently stank of rotten eggs on top of the buckets of blood caked into his crusty jacket, which also had two very obvious stab holes at the center of the dried blood. He looked back up, and saw the other man finally read the three letters seared into Adam’s face. “Aside from the SDC, I mean,” the guy said. 

Adam took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I got stabbed,” he said flatly. “Then I ran into a Basilisk.” The stranger whistled at that, but otherwise didn’t interrupt. “I haven’t exactly had the chance to stop at a hotel and wash up. I’m headed for the Market down in the Valley.” Adam coughed, at first from a soreness in his chest and then from the fluid the first cough spat up, until he was doubled over and hacking up what felt like bits of his lungs into his hand for nearly a minute. The stranger was smart enough to not try and help, but he did inch much closer just in case he was needed. The pain wasn’t bad enough for Adam to think he’d injured his lungs again, he figured it was probably just the leftovers coming up. Which was almost kind of worse.

“You gonna be okay?” the other man asked. Adam nodded, not exactly keen on speaking for the moment. “Well. Alright then. Thanks for saving my life, by the way. Me and my sister-in-law just came from the Market, you’re like half a day away.” 

“Your sister in law?” Adam croaked out with a wince. “Where’d she go? I don’t see her.” The stranger just raised his hand and pointed, and Adam looked behind him to follow the gesture. Up in the trees, squatting on a sturdy branch and inside of a shimmering orb that Adam guessed was some kind of shielding semblance, was a young human woman. Adam’s lips were pulling back in a sneer before he could think, and then he schooled his expression back to neutrality as quickly as possible. She seemed to have seen it, though, going by the amused glint in her eyes as she hopped down to the ground. 

“Samson over there can’t be wounded by grimm,” she said with a smirk and a gesture towards her in law, “but his semblance wouldn’t have lasted forever. So, seriously,” she said with a tinge of gratitude in her voice, “thank you for saving us. Is there anything you need? We’re heading up to Argus so we can’t accompany you, but we’d be happy to spare you some supplies or lien or something as thanks.”

“I need fifty thousand lien,” Adam said bluntly. “Other than that, I could use some water if you have any.” He turned back towards Samson, apparently, who was grinning. 

“Can’t spare you that much cash, but we have a whole jug of water for you. I’ve also got some connections at the market, so. If you tell us what you’re going there for I can give you a few names, maybe. Might get you a bit of a discount if you tell them to call me to confirm your story.” As he spoke, Samson collapsed his weapon and stuck it on his hip with a magnetic clip, and headed over to the remains of their tent and pulled out a large sealed jug of water. He tossed it towards Adam, who caught it with both hands. 

“I need new gear, clothes and weapons, and then I need someone to smuggle me into Solitas. Not Mantle, I just need to be dropped off at the southern shore of the tundra near a town or a base or something. I’ll handle the rest.” Adam barely finished speaking before he popped the jug open and chugged a good quarter of it. 

“Well, my good mysterious man, you’re in quite a bit of luck; the Vespids have someone out here for a week to finalize some deal or another, they should be able to hook you up with both. Look for a tall gangly guy with antennae, and tell him to call me.” Samson shrugged. “Prolly won’t get you a discount, they’re pretty stingy, but they won’t fuck you over and they won’t charge you extra for short notice if I ask em nicely not to.”

The woman was digging around in a scuffed but undamaged box while they talked, and she finally stood up and tossed something small Adam’s way. He barely caught it without dropping the jug, and he scowled at her as he capped the thing one handed and set it down on a rock. “Warn me next time,” he grumbled. Then he got a look at what she’d thrown him; scented washing powder, for use in a river or a lake during long trips. 

“There’s a lake a few hours to the east from here,” she said. “And uh. Be careful, yeah? Would hate to hear you never made it to the Market after you helped us out like that.” 

Her concern was genuine, and Adam wanted so badly to spit it back in her face, to tell her to stop being condescending, stop treating him like a weakling. But she wasn’t. He knew she wasn’t, even though he felt so strongly that she was, because what he felt…… well. It clearly didn’t have much bearing on reality. 

“Yeah.” Adam left the two of them without another word, heading east to check out the lake and maybe wash up a bit. They didn’t try to stop him, and they didn’t say a thing as he simply walked away. 

That night, as he camped out in a shoddy lean-to on the shore of that lake, Adam dreamed of having his throat torn out by a mouth of needle-like teeth. All he remembered when he woke up was that his last, gurgling words had been “Thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, by the way. For reading, and for caring.

**Author's Note:**

> Things will get worse. Then! They will get more worse! And then technically better but not really and kind of sad. All the better already happened, earlier in the series, and the fic after this one is done.... is going to be the Worst. So, y'know, buckle up for that!


End file.
